Imprint technology is a fine processing technology, which uses a mold having a reverse pattern of the desired fine concave-convex pattern. The mold is pressed against a transferring material on a substrate, thereby transferring the pattern of the mold onto the transferring material. Here, the transferring material is a liquid-state resin for example. The fine concave-convex pattern can vary between a nano-scale pattern of 10 nm-level size to a 100 μm-level size. The reverse pattern is used in a wide range of field including semiconductor materials, optical materials, recording media, micro machines, biotechnology, and environmental protection.
Here, molds having a nano-scale fine concave-convex pattern on its surface are expensive since it takes long time to form the pattern. Therefore, it is difficult to enlarge molds having the nano-scale fine concave-convex pattern on its surface (large-area molds).
Accordingly, in Patent Literature 1, imprint using a small mold is repeated by shifting the position of the mold so that the processed regions do not overlap with each other, thereby achieving imprint for a large area (step and repeat).